1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the management and control of call center and office telephony assets, and in particular to managing and controlling those assets using the Internet Protocol or other network addressing.
2. Background
A typical call center operates in a large room with many desks equipped with telephones. Each desk and telephone is referred to as a station and is used by a customer service agent or representative. Incoming calls are queued, if necessary, and routed to an available agent by a central switching system called an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). Most of the telephones have headsets attached for the agent's comfort during long periods of telephone use. Each agent may have his or her own headset, or, less typically, the agents may share headsets. In a 24-hour call center, three or more agents may use a single station, each agent working a different shift.
In non-ACD applications, where employees may have other responsibilities (e.g., technical support offices), the telephones may include various attachments. These attachments include a handset lifter to reduce answering the telephone to a single button push, and a flashing On-Line Indicator (OLD to let others know when the user is engaged in a telephone conversation. Typically, each station is equipped with either a desktop computer or a computer terminal connected to a central computer. The call center may contain from a few stations to many hundreds of stations. Moreover, some large corporations have several call centers located in different locations around the world.
One problem facing many call centers is asset management of the equipment for each station. The call center manager or technician must track where all of the equipment is located, test it for proper operation of the equipment, and perform diagnostics to identify the nature of any equipment failure. Presently, this task is performed manually by physically inspecting every piece of equipment in every call center station.